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IN SHORT: NONFICTION

MURDERER WITH A BADGE The Secret Life of a Rogue Cop. By Edward Humes. Dutton, $23.

In "Murderer With a Badge," Edward Humes presents us with a puzzle. William Ernest Leasure, called Mild Bill by his fellow Los Angeles police officers, lived up to his nickname in "his unremarkable 17-year record as a traffic cop." Yet from 1976 to 1986, prosecutors charged, he "committed every crime from murder to fraud, from theft to perjury." Nothing in his personality explained why a man who issued warnings instead of tickets, who never rebelled against authority or abused a suspect, would pirate yachts, orchestrate three murders or stockpile guns. Mr. Humes, the author of an earlier true-crime book, "Buried Secrets," writes that Mr. Leasure "never displayed the personality of a thrill killer -- or any other kind of killer. He never liked to hurt anyone or anything, not people or animals." The single thread that runs through this detailed account is that he liked to impress and to help his friends. In 1991 Mr. Leasure accepted a plea-bargain agreement on two charges of second-degree murder and received a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years to life. Despite Mr. Humes's admirable assembling of the facts, the secret of William Leasure remains inviolate.

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A version of this review appears in print on February 7, 1993, on Page 7007022 of the National edition with the headline: IN SHORT: NONFICTION. Today's Paper|Subscribe